


Curses

by TK_DuVeraun



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, Drama, M/M, No Smut, idiots to lovers, modern fodlan au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-18
Updated: 2019-10-18
Packaged: 2020-12-22 18:43:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21081320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TK_DuVeraun/pseuds/TK_DuVeraun
Summary: Crests should have died out and been forgotten once the War of Unification showed the world their true origins. Should have, but some curses are harder to get rid of than others.





	Curses

**Author's Note:**

> Well, I don't know what this is, but you can have it. [Inspired by this piece of art on twitter.](https://twitter.com/ageage_nori/status/1184842530040373250)

The knowledge of Crests should have disappeared after the War of Unification, at least, what they looked like. However, miscreants were always looking for new signs of rebellion. The Crest symbols decorated billboards and underpasses across every major city. Felix knew one Crest particularly well. It’d been spray-painted on his locker… scribbled across his homework in bold felt pen… even burned into his lawn, one memorable time. Did his parents even apologize for giving him a Hero’s name? Of course, not. “Just ignore them” was the constant refrain of his childhood.

It was supposed to stop when he got older, but instead everything took a turn for the worse. Puberty was an unmitigated disaster for everyone, but Felix wasn’t everyone. No, he had to go to a special new level of hell. One day when he was warming up on the punching bag in his garage a flash of blue light blinded him and he hit the bag with unnatural force. He didn’t hit it again. Hadn’t since. In that flash of light he’d seen the symbol that haunted his nightmares. The Crest of Fraldarius. His name had cursed him and there was nothing he could do but hide it.

No one commented on his sudden transformation from jock ready to throw down at every opportunity to studious nerd. At least he’d inherited his father’s talent for magic. The cursed Crest of Fraldarius didn’t have a magic component and didn’t respond when he threw lightning around the magic lab at school. Unfortunately, it  _ did _ have a ‘throwing a ball of paper into a bin’ component, though he discovered that in the privacy of his bedroom. In public he was limited to a sedate walk, to releasing trash from directly above bins, to not breaking the noses of bullies who definitely deserved it.

When he finally made it to university, Felix wanted to break his rules and punch out the Director of Student Life because he was been roomed with a guy who also had a cursed name. Sylvain smiled at him with the same someone-will-die-for-this glint in his eyes and Felix wondered if he also had a Crest in his blood and blazoned on his back. And hadn’t that been a surprise. None of the stories mention the giant, blazing sigil would burn itself more vibrantly into his skin every time the Crest activated.

“You know,” Sylvain said in lieu of an introduction because when you had a cursed name you said it as rarely as possible, “there was a kid at my secondary school named Dimitri. Crazy strong and absolutely oblivious.”

Felix scroffed and dropped, not threw, his bag of clothes on the floor of the wardrobe.

“Whoa, no, okay, this is not what life is gonna be like, right? Tell me you’re not going to make a mess of the room.”

“Tell me you know how to shut up and we’ll make a deal.”

All in all, university wasn’t the worst time of his life. His professors addressed him by his surname and he simply never told anyone about his curse. Sylvain had adopted the oft-suggested strategy of just using a nickname (“If a girl comes by looking for Sean, that’s me.”), but between the two of them they prefered “asshole” and “hey you.” Every morning was a bizarre ritual of… Not that Felix wanted to dignify Sylvain’s ridiculousness, but ‘reverse gay chicken’ was really the only way to phrase how they would dress and undress with their backs to the wall, staring at the other to ensure they weren’t trying to steal a glance in a mirror. It was stupid. They were stupid, but they were cursed.

“You know what would be ironic?” Sylvain asked one night when they were mutually pretending to be asleep. “If someone named Ingrid had the Crest of Dominic.”

“Don’t be stupid. Crests don’t exist anymore,” Felix said after a pause that lingered far too long. The Fraldarius curse burned on his back and he would have sworn he saw blue light peeking out from his blankets.

Sylvain laughed, quiet, throaty and fake. “Yeah, of course. What was I thinking?”

They survived the first year without killing each other, or anyone else. They met a guy named Lorenz, who seemed completely oblivious to his cursed name. They hated him. By the time summer came, Felix and Sylvain were a ‘they.’ A Felix-and-Sylvain (“Hey, why aren’t were Sylvain-and-Felix. I’m older!”). Not because they were dating.  _ That _ was partially due to Sylvain’s endless string of girlfriends and partially due to the fact that the goddess hated Felix and certain relevant hand motions made his Crest activate, so his plan of just pleasuring the stupid out of Sylvain was out.

Their second year passed much like the first, except that idiot Dimitri Sylvain knew transferred to their school. He roomed with another idiot named Claude who vascilliatated more between being upset and not over his cursed name than Sylvain did between women. Well, he was down to only one per week, but Felix wrote that off as a result of their increased workload. Reverse gay chicken stopped, not because he was less paranoid, but because Felix had morning classes and Sylvain didn’t, offsetting their schedules by four hours, give or take.

If one day, Felix had passed out face down on his bed after a shower without a shirt on, it didn’t matter because he woke up under his duvet and no one mentioned it. If the girls stopped showing up at their dorm, it was only because Sylvain was kind enough to let him sleep undisturbed.

They moved into a tiny flat together that summer because neither wanted to spend any more time with the parents that cursed them than necessary and no other reason. Felix cleaned the kitchen after he used it because it was functionally their dining room and half of their living room and not because he knew messes bothered Sylvain and food messes  _ bothered _ Sylvain. If he stopped caring about keeping his back covered, it was because their three yellowed windows looked onto a solid brick wall and no one came over, certainly no girls.

It had nothing to do with the Incident. The Incident being when he’d forgotten his clothes and had to leave the bathroom with only a towel around his waist. Sylvain had been there because he had cursed timing, just like how he had a cursed name. Sylvain had been there and touched the center of his back with the lightest touch that erased the feeling of the Crest on his flesh.

“Yeah,” Sylvain had said. “Yeah, it’s alright, you know?”

“Is it?” He’d snarled back. He hadn’t wanted to look, but he did and Sylvain’s fake smile was gone. 

His mouth was even, his eyebrows downturned and squished together. He licked his lips and nodded. “Yeah. It’s alright.”

They didn’t talk about the Incident. They didn’t talk about anything the day Sylvain got the news his brother had died. They squished together on their secondhand, squeaky couch, Sylvain’s head under Felix’s chin and his tank top skewed to the side, revealing a much more reasonably sized Crest of Gautier on his shoulderblade. 

“Can we be ‘Sylvain-and-Felix’ now?” He asked two days later after waking up in the same bed.

Felix smacked him and for the first time didn’t flinch at the blue light.

Sylvain flinched, but for a completely different reason.

**Author's Note:**

> [@duveraun on twitter](https://twitter.com/duveraun)   
[@tk-duveraun on tumblr](https://tk-duveraun.tumblr.com/)


End file.
